The Ballad of Judas Iscariot
by eldritcher
Summary: In which Severus realises that betrayal is not a cup of tea he prefers. This is one of the three Severus stories that I tried to put together. Loosely named the Judas Triptych, 'Lost Gods and Godlike Men, 'The Ballad of Judas Iscariot' and 'Childe Harold's Tale' are the pieces.


The Ballad Of Judas Iscariot - based on the poem by the same name by Robert Buchanan.

Warnings: swearing, reference to past child abuse.

_This is one of the three Severus stories that I tried to put together. Loosely named the Judas Triptych, 'Lost Gods and Godlike Men, 'The Ballad of Judas Iscariot' and 'Childe Harold's Tale' are the pieces._

* * *

"Severus? Reading Muggle poetry in my study?"

I made a noncommittal noise.

"Making free with my brandy too, I notice."

I did not bother to grace that with a reply.

"And lounging about in my chair."

"Yes, lounging about in a chair battered down by hundreds of fine Malfoy arses."

"Such language!"

And he batted my hand away from the bottle of brandy as I tried to pour myself another. He looked concerned. Surely, he was not worried that I might end up like my drunkard of a father? I had been drinking more of late. I had hoped he would not notice. In retrospect, that had been foolish. I had been emptying his cellars after all. He was now peering curiously at the title of the tome I held.

"The Ballad of Judas Iscariot, by Robert Williams Buchanan," he read out. "What is it about?"

"Nothing that will interest you, Lucius. Here, take your chair. I am off to catch some sleep."

I folded the book closed and got to my feet.

"Is there anything on your mind?" the persistent bastard asked. "You have been most testy of late."

"I am fine. Goodnight."

"Is he treating you well?" he continued, in a softer tone.

I swore. He took that to be a sign of ill-treatment and immediately made sympathetic clucking, cooing noises that he was fond of making at his son. Then he came around the writing desk and patted me on the arm. I took a step back. Not one to be dissuaded easily, he pulled me into an embrace.

Then he said, "Is there something I can do?"

"He is not fucking me at all," I muttered. "Please cease worrying."

My determined sympathiser asked, "Are you fretting about so because he doesn't pursue intimacy? I understand it must be difficult for you, given your inclination for activities of intimate companionship."

Leave it to him to couch fucking in such elegant words.

"I am not sexually frustrated, Lucius. Now be a good man and let me be!"

I did not wait for his reply. Quickly, I slid out of his reach, exited the room, and closed the door firmly behind me. He could go and coo at his young son instead. I looked at the title of the book I held.

It was unlikely that Lucius could contribute any advice to my problem. I was planning to betray a madman who wanted to kill a newborn babe. That I happened to fiercely love said madman contributed complexity to the case.

* * *

Madmen are whimsical. I was not surprised to see my Lord seated on my bed when I entered my room. He had done so many a time before, to assault me with conversation. It was a cold December and the fire was lit. He preferred fires to warming charms. I watched the shadows dancing on his face and craved more than I could ask for.

"The Ballad of Judas?" my Lord queried, curiosity evident in his question. "It is morbidly Christian, Severus. Why would you fancy it as bed-time reading?"

"How do you know?" I asked. I had not expected him to know of it.

He smiled and said, "Come here and hear a secret, Severus."

Greed for knowing more about him soared high in me. I wanted to be the one who knew the most about him. I collected these scraps tenderly and stored them as any zealous lover in history ever had. I sighed. And caved in. I lived for these moments. I walked closer. He patted the bed. Fear and want clawed their way up into my heart. I had only been so close once before and it had made me giddy and drunk on the power he exuded.

After I had gingerly placed my rump on the edge of the bed, moving as close to him as I dared to, he said, "I was educated at a Catholic school until I came to Hogwarts."

"Oh."

"A Cross upon the windy hill,  
And a Cross on either side,  
Three skeletons that swing thereon,  
Who had been crucified."

I was shivering. His voice rendering those words to tune had instilled an unspeakable terror in me. A terror not of him, but of what love had warped me to.

"Perhaps I did not choose the least dramatic of verses," he said, near apologetically, looking at my shivering frame with concern. "You are usually not so affected, though."

"Why did you choose those verses?" I asked, trying to battle myself into composure.

"It is the tale of Judas, Severus. And the tale of Judas is only a tale of betrayal."

Regulus Black had not been heard of for a long time now. Lucius had professed to know nothing related to the disappearance. Bellatrix, responsible for training the young Black, had been worried. I suspected what had befallen him had not been the enemy's curses.

"Regulus will turn up when he will," the Lord said peaceably. "The Blacks are notorious for their instability, Severus. I am sure he is off wenching somewhere, a pastime that you are intimately familiar with."

The faint accusation present scalded me. I said hotly, "I haven't been anywhere after..." I broke off, having no idea how to complete the sentence.

His gaze held mine and I felt the familiar invasive and yet strangely intimate tendrils of touch in my mind. I was not Abraxas Malfoy, but I knew this man well enough to notice that his countenance cleared as he saw I spoke the truth.

"I will teach you to fly," he said, rising smoothly to his feet.

"Fly?" I asked, trying in vain to understand. I could fly decently well with the old broomstick I had. Was he implying that he did not think my skills good enough? I failed to make sense of his words. In the end, I said, "But I know how to fly."

He did not reply. He walked to the door and held it open. I got up and followed him. Out we went onto the green lawns.

It was a cold and clear night. I looked at the stars and the moon and at the treetops gently moving with the wind. I sensed him behind me. I sighed and leaned back as for the first time his arms entwined around my form. I could feel his bones and the fast tempo of his heart. He had a heart. I laughed weakly. He pressed a cold index finger to my lips, sealing me silent.

There I stood, looking up at the moon. There I stood suspended, then, looking down at the treetops and the Manor old.

My voice was a croak when I whispered, "My lord?"

His voice was warm and soft, though his hands were cold around me. "I will teach you how to fly, Severus."

* * *

Bending knee to Dumbledore was the most demeaning experience of my life. I had been beaten nearly to death by my drunkard of a father, spat upon by my mother, taunted by Sirius Black and his gang, mocked by Lily, cursed by Bellatrix and subjected to my Lord's occasional bursts of malicious jesting at my expense. Yet none of that compared to this.

As I lay sobbing at his feet, after he had sliced my mind into shreds, after he had perused at detail every detail of my sorry life and brought it gently and mockingly to my attention again, after he had wrested words of abject penitence and self-degradation out of me, he asked, "And what is your price? Will you ask for thirty silver coins?"

I wiped off the tears with the colourful handkerchief he regally spun out of thin air, and shook my head. I had taken my price. I had, with all that was wizard in me, shielded what had mattered the most. I had shielded where my heart lay. Ironic that it was the same passion that had driven me to Dumbledore that shielded the most important creed of my life from him.

* * *

"You look miserable," Lucius remarked, the next day. "What have you been doing?"

"Nothing."

"Severus?"

"Nothing!" I snapped. He looked disappointed but let the matter drop.

* * *

The Lord was less prone to let the matter drop. He did not call me out on my pallor or my abject misery in the ensuing days, but he kept a sharp eye and I was extremely heedful.

"We are holding a Christmas Party, Severus. It promises to be a remarkable year ahead. And I wish to celebrate."

It did promise to be a remarkable year, though the reasons were going to be quite different from what he wished for, if I managed to play the hyena long enough. What had happened to Regulus?

I was losing weight rapidly. My countenance, never the most pleasing, had become ghastly. My drinking had escalated. Even the women in Soho said that I looked too dangerous to be serviced. I was frightened and torn thin. Narcissa had become more vocal about the drink. Lucius, for once, had not stepped in to defend me. Deprived of drink and women, I turned to violence. I provoked Bellatrix into fights. Mad as rabid dogs, we circled each other on the greens of the Manor and strove to rip out shreds of each other's bodies and minds. Sometimes, we succeeded.

A thin hand came to rest upon my thinner one. For the first time in my service to him, I was thinner. I smiled at this twist of fate.

He led me down to the eastern fields, where bluebells grew wild among stately trees that bore the stamp of grief like old widows. The ghost of a man who had loved this monster before I had been even born still lingered here in my fanciful imagination.

"It has been a snowy winter," my companion remarked.

He was walking before me. His boots left damp marks in the pristine snow. For the sliver of a second, as he walked, he was cast into silhouette against a yellow moon shining bright and sick on the dark skies. I was reminded strongly of the poem. It did my unsettled mind no favours.

And the wold was white with snow,  
And his foot-marks black and damp,  
And the ghost of the silvern Moon arose,  
Holding her yellow lamp.

"Severus?"

I caught up with him. He was looking at me carefully. I gulped and met his gaze, wondering if this might be the moment when he would pry my secret from me. Would this be when Regulus's fate, unknown, befell me?

He folded his arm around my wrist and Apparated us. When I opened my eyes again, we were on the outskirts of a church.

"My Lord?"

He did not reply. I followed him, frightened, as we picked our way through a graveyard. The headstones were in derelict state, most of them. The rare one stood bedecked with a posy of dead flowers. My fanciful imagination tried to look for anything that might bear the least connection to Regulus's death. Was this where I would die? In the silent night, my heart was the only moaning creature.

"In here," he said.

He was leading me into the church itself. I followed him. It was a Catholic one, by the looks of it. I looked at the stained glass windows and the high ceilings. There were doves nesting in the rafters. The pews were brown and empty. The candles stood in their golden brackets, unlit and tall. When I brought my eyes to him again, I realised that he had been staring at me while I had taken in my sights. I waited for my doom.

"We are in London. I often come here," he said quietly. "The orphanage I grew up in is close by. I had sung often on the choir here, before the War."

He was old.

He had chosen to tell me something scarcely anyone else knew of. This place, though, was suffocating. It reminded me of that poem ill-chosen for a bed-time reading.

"Why do you come here?" I asked him hoarsely.

He laughed. His high-pitched, cold laughter was unnerving anywhere. Yet, on hallowed ground, it was at its foulest.

"Strangely, I have only this to call home," he murmured. "The orphanage was razed after the War. The Castle is barred to me."

"This is a church," I said. "Why would you call this home?"

"I have slept here often enough," he said cryptically, indicating the pews.

"Why?" I asked.

He looked at me. I knew I had failed to understand something. I strove to identify the link I had missed. Expectant wait gave way to disappointment on his countenance. For a moment, in the cavernous, empty church, he looked alone and desolate. Then, seeing him, I realised that fear had suppressed the passion that cleaved me to him. I had chosen this. I had chosen all of this. I crept closer. He looked relieved. I dared to hold his hands in mine. He did not pull away. He had not pulled away, on the lone previous occasion I had dared.

"The clergy is notorious in these parts for more than just their piety," he remarked, indicating the choir pews with a nod of his head.

I had an abusive father. He was a sadist when the drink was high in him, but I had been spared this. My mother had been watchful.

"My lord?" I whispered, clenching the hands I held in mine, willing them to take away the dawning understanding of the import of his words.

He did not reply. Instead, he gently extricated his hands from mine and spun a handkerchief out of the air. Dumbledore had done me the same courtesy. Yet, this was different.

"Please," I whispered, wanting him to make me forget having heard this, wanting to leave before I looked at him with pity and grief. "Please."

"You are the bravest man I know," he murmured. "I want a favour."

"Favour?" I croaked, trying to stem the tears falling free.

He lit the candles with a wave of the wand. The look of resolution stamped on his face scared me.

"It was usually lit," he explained airily. "I want you to accompany me to the pew across us and undo the mischief of the past."

I stared at him. I had imagined making love to him, many a time. I had imagined being made love to, many a time. This, this, however...

"Severus?" he asked.

I knew what I saw then in those eyes. I saw fear and uncertainty. I saw the slightest sliver of pleading. I knew that he was a man who feared much. Dumbledore did not know fear. My lord did. Yet, this was the only time when it was bared before me.

"Yes, my lord," I mumbled, trying to compose myself.

Touching him was pleasant, though he was bony and thin. Pleasing him was easy; it seemed as if nothing would displease him. His touch was hesitant in the beginning, and then grew confident. When ropes conjured from the air playfully held me down, I knew the fear and uncertainty was gone.

"Look at me," he murmured.

I was busy exploring a series of scars on his wrists. Had he been cutting himself for some ritual?

"Look at me!" he commanded.

I did. And fell into a dark, warm embrace of thoughts too fast for me to make sense of. I was spinning in a kaleidoscope of memories. I saw bluebells and a man kissing a corpse. I saw two teenagers in a dark bedchamber laughing. I saw orphans. Then I saw a flaxen-haired man too close, his slightly corpulent frame nude and committing an act evil upon a young boy.

I had not realised that I was heaving until a skin-warmed hand came to pat me gingerly.

"I am sorry," I said, crying.

"He was sorry too, before he died," was the irritable answer.

"I am sorry," I said again, before taking his mouth in a grief-fuelled kiss.

* * *

I was gifted a set of dress robes for the Christmas celebration. It was on my bed, without a note attached. I sighed as I picked it up.

"Those are very fine robes," Alastor Moody remarked in passing after an Order meeting.

I hated the man. He hated me more. He was eying me speculatively. He would not hesitate to kill me or maim me as soon as I stopped being useful, I knew. I was one more Death Eater to be taken off the planet.

"Thank you," I said.

"I can smell a foul magic on them," he said, watching me warily.

"I brew potions for my living," I said, managing not to lose my composure.

I knew, as well as he did, whose magic marked the robes. Dumbledore had not remarked, since he thought it natural given that I spent time in the Dark Lord's company.

* * *

"I want to die wearing these," I remarked to Lucius.

"Morbid pest," he said irritably, poring over his household accounts. "Go bother someone else."

* * *

Lucius came to me saying that the Dark Lord had summoned me to the Shack.

"Lucius?"

"Put these on," he said softly. The robes had been discarded in his Manor after those events of 1981.

"Lucius?" I asked, my voice hoarse.

He did not reply. Instead, he embraced me.

"Leave the country, please," I begged him. I would die cleanly. He was unlikely to merit the same, regardless of how this ended.

He shook his head and said tiredly, "Someone must stay and remember."


End file.
